Ok so my father somehow in his wisdom wrote a second time to a CD-r and lost the data already stored there. Cd-diag (shareware version) showed the data is still there but only the registered copy will let me access that. Well i was wondering if there was anyother way/program for less than $50 (£32 approx) that would do the trick.

You can download the Nero Demo, and use the CDRECORDER>SAVE TRACK feature to save the session to your HD as a Nero .NRG Image file. THen you can either burn the image file back to the CD, or a new CD. Or use the Nero Image Driver to mount the Image file and copy the data to your HD.